The state of Michigan is tragically failing to provide many of the most vulnerable children in its care with a quality education, delaying graduation of some teens by years or leaving them so frustrated that they drop out of school, according to foster youth, their educators and advocates who have tried to help them.
NBC News talked to 10 former or current Michigan foster youth who collectively spent time in more than a dozen residential facilities in recent years, either because the state said they needed treatment for mental health or substance misuse issues or because social workers could not find a family to take them.
Each one of them attended classes for months or years with other young residents of those facilities. They were assigned schoolwork and all of them completed it. Unfortunately for them, the classes they took in the state-funded, state-licensed institutions did not necessarily count toward graduation.
Classes that Michigan foster youth took were not reflected on their transcript
They learned that lesson the hard way when they moved out of these facilities and tried transferring to a public school. Some thought they had received quality instruction from caring teachers but apparently that was not the case at all.
Kayla Goshay learned when she was 18 years old that the classes she took during two years in a home for girls were not reflected on her transcript. She suspected the courses were not great as girls ages 12 to 17 were all taking the same online classes at the same time. Goshay, who is now 23, was told back then that she was working toward a diploma.
Goshay said she was shocked when they said she had no credits so she had to start over. She added that she was hurt and irritated because she thought she was doing something and she really was not doing anything.
Children in foster care face some of the country's steepest obstacles to graduation, with only about 54 percent earning a diploma or GED certificate by age 19, compared to about 86 percent of public high school students overall in the United States.
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Problems of foster youth are compounded in states like Michigan
Facing even longer odds are foster youth who are placed in institutions, a group that is disproportionately Black and Latino. According to experts, since they are more likely to have unmet emotional and social needs, they are less likely to have foster parents to speak up for them.
Their problems are exacerbated in states like Michigan, where education officials and the child welfare system pay little attention to the instruction facilities. Foster care advocates and educators said they have failed to ensure that these facilities comply with laws requiring the timely transfer of academic records.
Michigan's education and child welfare agencies say they have no way to systematically or comprehensively oversee the quality of education provided in these facilities. The contracts Michigan has with 58 institutions require them to provide children with appropriate educational services. However, the state leaves the definition of "appropriate" up to the organizations or companies that run them.
